G3 to G4 upgrades... later G4 - G5?

macrumors regular

I was looking around on google and found a G3 powerbook (pismo I think?) that was updated to a G4. Does this happen often for macs? You don't wanna buy the next model up so you send your mac off someplace for someone to replace the processor card or something? Would this happen for the Al PBs sometime in the future? If not the G5 just invest in a faster G4 down the line if they up the speed from 1.5Ghz any I guess...

macrumors 6502a

Apple should make more upgradable computers(CPU wise) and provide upgrades themselves. They used to, for me old 575 you could get a 100 MHZ PPC upgrade from Apple for that thing. Or apple could contract out to someone like Sonnet to make official Apple upgrade cards for machines. Some way for apple to get some profit, while still allowing people to upgrade their machines. Imagine Apple still getting profit because they sold official upgrades to something like the B&W G3's, those were very nice machines, very upgradable, and still widely in use.

thread startermacrumors regular

Apple should make more upgradable computers(CPU wise) and provide upgrades themselves. They used to, for me old 575 you could get a 100 MHZ PPC upgrade from Apple for that thing. Or apple could contract out to someone like Sonnet to make official Apple upgrade cards for machines. Some way for apple to get some profit, while still allowing people to upgrade their machines. Imagine Apple still getting profit because they sold official upgrades to something like the B&W G3's, those were very nice machines, very upgradable, and still widely in use.

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wish they would... I can understand needing to make money and all that crap yet just because you take away a person's ability to upgrade something doesn't mean they'll plop down like... oh... 6X more money on the spot, they'll just sit around and not spend any money for awhile...

macrumors G4

the g5 is 64 bit so there is no chance of it working on a 32 bit logic board the ppc upgrade worked because the old 68k chips were 32 bit and so were the ppc's

and there is no chance for a powerbook upgrade because the new powerbooks have cpu soldered to the logic board not on daughter cards like the onld g3's did. if it was on a daughter card the powerbook would be allot thicker

macrumors 6502a

Sure thats not possible but clearly its possible to upgrade to faster G3's or G4's. Take my old G4 533, I loved that machine and would have gladly forked out to apple for a faster G4 on it. Look at the B&W G3's, 900-1100 MHZ G3 upgrades are still pretty hot for these machines. Since the upgrade market is clearly there, I would think it would be in Apples best interest to provide some upgrades for these machines. I understand Apple wants you to buy a new machine, and they get their bi-yearly money out of me, but many of these machines people are going to upgrade with, or in the current case, without Apple. Apple might as well cash in on some of the profits. With 3 or 4 upgrade manufactures there is clearly a decent market for these types of products. And where there's a will there's a way, like the Old Sonnet Upgrades for the 54-5500 series machines that went in the L2 Cache slot to upgrade them to G3. Apple is losing out money wise by not providing their own upgrades for many of these machines, or like I suggested before, sign on one of these other companies to make Apple official upgrades, akin to the Belkin addons for the ipod.

macrumors 6502a

Apple should make more upgradable computers(CPU wise) and provide upgrades themselves. They used to, for me old 575 you could get a 100 MHZ PPC upgrade from Apple for that thing. Or apple could contract out to someone like Sonnet to make official Apple upgrade cards for machines. Some way for apple to get some profit, while still allowing people to upgrade their machines. Imagine Apple still getting profit because they sold official upgrades to something like the B&W G3's, those were very nice machines, very upgradable, and still widely in use.

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Why bother?

Better to spend the time and money making new computers than spending it on making upgrades.

The best way to upgrade a Mac is to sell the old one, and use the money to buy a new one.

macrumors 68040

no chance. G3 and G4 systems are basically almost the same, only the cpus has different capabilities. the G5 however is truly a next generation.

the G numbering is only a marketing thing. it should be like this:

1st gen: 60x series
2nd gen: G3 & G4
3rd gen: G5

probably the G6 to come will also be a third generation powerpc design, but we will see. if i have a correct assumption, the current G5 beasts can be upgraded to G6 later on.

but that's not so simple, dudes. the G3 and G4 system designs just were so close to each other that the cpu upgrade cards were possible.

and that's the way it is in the pc side, too. you cannot put a pentium into a x86 motherboard and you cannot put a pentium2/3 into a pentium motherboard. and you cannot put a pentium4 into any previous motherboard either. intel just has those celerons to mix it up, but as i stated before: G3 and G4 are basically the same generation and one could compare the G3 as being a "celeron of mac world" or something. and you could put a pentium3 into a pentium2 motherboard, but let's face it: those are the same generation chips and the numbering is totally just a marketing issue.

what i meant to say is that marketing lives in totally different world than tech specs. everything is not as they make it look like.

(and as i said, everyone does this. intel too is not making a fourth generation chip with pentium4, if comparison goes to what i presented before. you can think of pre-pentiums being equal to pre-powerpc if you want to put wintels and macs into comparison. then, the first intel generation would be the pentiums, and the second intel generation would be pentium pro/2/3 series. and the pentium4 would be the third generation that matches the G5 in the mac side. luckily apple was wise enough to select a "generation" for marketing - it becomes hilarious when intel releases a pentium5 some day because in the beginning they wanted to introduce the pentium name to mean their fifth generation of x86 chips. so "fifth-five"? come on... they need to invent something else in their marketing department, badly.)

thread startermacrumors regular

hmmm... good points... entirely forgot that little bit of information... if it were possible I would like the idea of having my powerbook's speed increased should there ever be more increases in clock speed beyond just the 1.5Ghz range yet seeing as the thing is embedded into the mb unless a company ever offers to somehow remove it and install another I guess the idea of having it upgraded sometime is entirely out of the question...

I would like to see apple focus a little more on the upgrades though, I mean yeah odds are they might take a hit in some form but it would potentially enable to mac to branch out a little. If people complain about the cost of the mac you could easily argue that's a one time thing, afterwards you can just focus on simple upgrades from there on out.

I know mac toyed around with the idea of allowing mac clones and stopped that but why haven't they considered allowing users to just purchase components? Just make their own mac motherboards or cpus for the users who just like building their components? ... or would that cause clones anyways even if mac is the only company making the components?

macrumors 6502a

I would like to see apple focus a little more on the upgrades though, I mean yeah odds are they might take a hit in some form but it would potentially enable to mac to branch out a little. If people complain about the cost of the mac you could easily argue that's a one time thing, afterwards you can just focus on simple upgrades from there on out.

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Not a good idea. Apple runs a pretty tight ship already, and to do what you propose, they would need to get another engineering team up and running, not to mention another marketing, and advertising team. Then, you get the headache of having to test all sorts of weird different combinations, and you have the exact nightmare scenario that Microsoft has with all of the Wintel systems out there. No thanks.

Better to spend the time on complete systems. If 3rd party companies want to deal with upgrades, then let them.

While you can shoehorn a G4 to work in a G3 system, it is working in 'G3-mode' and you do not get the benefits of an improved bus interface. The improved bus interface allowed for more transactions, giving a boost in performance. Night and day.

thread startermacrumors regular

Not a good idea. Apple runs a pretty tight ship already, and to do what you propose, they would need to get another engineering team up and running, not to mention another marketing, and advertising team. Then, you get the headache of having to test all sorts of weird different combinations, and you have the exact nightmare scenario that Microsoft has with all of the Wintel systems out there. No thanks.

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Would it really be that bad though? Would giving the end user the ability to switch out G4 chip X for faster chip Y really result in such a horrible thing? Beyond that their tight ship would be a rather large determent but I'm not sure how much money would have to be spent with a marketing and advertising team, if you don't want everyone to go off to switching out CPUs, don't advertise it as much, I haven't seen any intel advertisements lately saying 'buy this CPU!' it's usually done through sticker form, and those who want to upgrade already know how, and why to do it without the use of advertisements.

If it was to the level of motherboards, and the CPUs I could start to see a few situations arise, however if it was only apple constructing these they would know what they would be catering for anyways, unlike microsoft who has to hope for the best in the very end... more or less.

macrumors 6502a

Would it really be that bad though? Would giving the end user the ability to switch out G4 chip X for faster chip Y really result in such a horrible thing? Beyond that their tight ship would be a rather large determent but I'm not sure how much money would have to be spent with a marketing and advertising team, if you don't want everyone to go off to switching out CPUs, don't advertise it as much, I haven't seen any intel advertisements lately saying 'buy this CPU!' it's usually done through sticker form, and those who want to upgrade already know how, and why to do it without the use of advertisements.

If it was to the level of motherboards, and the CPUs I could start to see a few situations arise, however if it was only apple constructing these they would know what they would be catering for anyways, unlike microsoft who has to hope for the best in the very end... more or less.

macrumors 6502a

Not a good idea. Apple runs a pretty tight ship already, and to do what you propose, they would need to get another engineering team up and running, not to mention another marketing, and advertising team. Then, you get the headache of having to test all sorts of weird different combinations, and you have the exact nightmare scenario that Microsoft has with all of the Wintel systems out there. No thanks.

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I fail too see what horrendous wierd combinations that Apple releasing Apple upgrade cards would create. If Apple creates the upgrades I would assume they would be able to make the work most splendedly with their hardware and software. As for the marketing, someone said don't advertise that much. Just make it avalable, thats more than enough. I'm not asking for uber upgrading capabilities. Just like I can upgrade my old Athlon system to a speeder Athlon XP, Sure to get the fastest latest chip you need a new mobo with new technologys, but you can still upgrade to a faster chip with your current socket in most cases. I'd rather pay Apple to upgrade my G4 533 than Powerlogix or Sonnet but thats what happens because the options arn't there from Apple. Clearly I'm not asking the impossible, though it might be improbable knowing Apple's track record.

For the record I have been using a Mac since I was 10, and I'm not turning my back on Apple any time soon. I have to fight tooth and nail every day of the week at my tech support job with Lame-o's who insist Mac's such but can't give a reason, then come crying to me when they screw up their boot.ini file. I just feel that Apple could stand to change some things, and if a company is not willing to change they will face probelms for certain.

macrumors 6502a

I fail too see what horrendous wierd combinations that Apple releasing Apple upgrade cards would create. If Apple creates the upgrades I would assume they would be able to make the work most splendedly with their hardware and software.

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First you make it.
Then you have to test it.
Then you have to handhold the people doing the upgrades.

Forget it. Just make a new box, test the new box, and you don't have to handhold anyone doing any upgrades. Just sell the old box and use the money to buy a new box.

Simple, easy.

Or if its a sufficiently large single customer, like Virginia Tech, offer to buy the old boxes, and sell them new boxes plus the difference, and refurb the old boxes, and sell them to customers.

macrumors 6502a

While you can shoehorn a G4 to work in a G3 system, it is working in 'G3-mode' and you do not get the benefits of an improved bus interface. The improved bus interface allowed for more transactions, giving a boost in performance. Night and day.

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G3 mode? Huh? Yes, the bus speed will be restricted to whatever the original motherboard supports, but when upgrading from a G3 to a G4, you still get the advantage of AltiVec, and almost always, you get an increase in core processor speed. Often a G4 upgrade card also includes a larger L3 cache than was included originally with a G3 system. Sure, your new FrankenMac/G4 running at an FSB of 66MHz or 100MHz won't be as fast as the same clocked G4 running at an FSB of 133MHz or 167MHz, but in no way does a G4 upgrade card get put into some type of 'G3 mode'.

Check www.xlr8yourmac.com. There are plenty of benchmarks to show that G4 upgrade cards can result in significant improvements in performance, especially if the applications you run are AltiVec accelerated. Not everyone can shell out several thousand dollars when they need a faster Mac.

macrumors 6502a

G3 mode? Huh? Yes, the bus speed will be restricted to whatever the original motherboard supports, but when upgrading from a G3 to a G4, you still get the advantage of AltiVec, and almost always, you get an increase in core processor speed.

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G4 allowed the MaxBus as well, which enabled multiple transactions on the system bus, increasing the efficiency of the bus. G3s did not.

Altivec with a G3 bus, you are not able to feed that hungry compute monster enough to make a lot of difference. There is a reason that Motorola put MaxBus and Altivec together.

macrumors 6502a

G4 allowed the MaxBus as well, which enabled multiple transactions on the system bus, increasing the efficiency of the bus. G3s did not.

Altivec with a G3 bus, you are not able to feed that hungry compute monster enough to make a lot of difference. There is a reason that Motorola put MaxBus and Altivec together.

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Looking at some earlier reviews of G4 upgrade kits for G3 PowerMacs, it seems that upgrading a B&W 350MHz G3 PowerMac with a 500MHz G4 card (the Other World Computing Mercury G4/500) results in a system which performs almost identically to a genuine PowerMac G4/500. Using Photoshop 5.5 with PS5Bench shows that the upgraded B&W PowerMac with a 500MHz G4 takes 102.9 seconds to complete the test. A 500MHz G4 PowerMac (AGP model) takes 101.2 seconds to complete the benchmark, ie: approximately 1% difference in speed. This is compared to the 166.1 seconds it takes the stock G3/350 system to perform the same benchmark.

The same two systems were also compared using CineBench 2000. Scores were:

macrumors 65816

Looking at some earlier reviews of G4 upgrade kits for G3 PowerMacs, it seems that upgrading a B&W 350MHz G3 PowerMac with a 500MHz G4 card (the Other World Computing Mercury G4/500) results in a system which performs almost identically to a genuine PowerMac G4/500. Using Photoshop 5.5 with PS5Bench shows that the upgraded B&W PowerMac with a 500MHz G4 takes 102.9 seconds to complete the test. A 500MHz G4 PowerMac (AGP model) takes 101.2 seconds to complete the benchmark, ie: approximately 1% difference in speed. This is compared to the 166.1 seconds it takes the stock G3/350 system to perform the same benchmark.

The same two systems were also compared using CineBench 2000. Scores were:

thread startermacrumors regular

The G3 & G4 motherboards can't feed a G5 chip. You'd need to replace the whole thing...then you would need to cool it...it would cost more than buying the computer.

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yeah, that dawned on me after awhile, course now I'm wondering if there'd ever be a company that would somehow manage to get a faster G4 onto the motherboard, course considering what they'd have to do to replace the chip... I'd probably never really go through with it at all

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